ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF GUNS: An Illustrated Directory of Over 1,000 Military and Sporting Firearms

by David Miller (Editor)

From the early "pepperbox" pistol to the AK-47 and Skorpion of modern times this guide illustrates and describes hundreds of military and civilian pistols and long arms of the past two centuries. Each weapon is illustrated in a full-color profile with statistical information on length, weight, caliber, and muzzle velocity, with history, manufacture and any important factors in its operation and use.

Genres: Reference

304 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2000

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Mahnoor]

Touchy subject. Generally, you should not clean collector guns, but circumstances do bear consideration. For example, should you clean the weathered M1911 you bought and shoot every weekend? Absolutely. That is an active gun and it needs to be maintained. It is in what many call its “usable” or “useful life.” Clean it. Take care of it. Prolong its life. On the other hand, should you clean the early production Winchester Model 1873 you got from Grandpa that shows a brown patina? Absolutely not. While the gun may still be usable at this point, it is worth more as a historical piece than as a shooter. It has entered the second part of its life called its “collectible life.” It should not be cleaned nor shot at this point as the loss in value could be significant and firing some weapons in their collectible life could be dangerous. Besides, if the desire to use a collectible gun becomes unbearable, there are many current reproductions of older models available. You can still purchase brand new reproduction black powder rifles, percussion revolvers, lever actions, and even pepperbox pistols!
Antique firearms auction house

[Caleb Sommerville]

The pictures are nice, but I don't think I've seen a more poorly made mistake-riddled book. Mismatched units of measure, typos, missing words, badly edited photos, duplicated pages (yes, entire pages), inconsistent formatting, etc.
This is very much a first draft, and shame on the publisher for not proofreading this more.

[Professor]

How harshly can you judge a coffee table book that's essentially just a bunch of pictures of guns with their vital statistics and a two paragraph entry about them? It's pretty much exactly what it is. The only reason I gave it such a low rating was that the book spent (for my tastes) too much time telling us how the guns operated, rather than any information about how they performed, how they were received, and so on.

[Mike (the Paladin)]

I have noted elsewhere that I enjoy shooting. I learned firearms safety and shooting beginning at an early age from my dad and granddad. This book is not only an enjoyable "read" with photos and details about firearms from throughout history it's a wonderful reference work. I, like many here, wriet and this book (among other works) has come in handy.

It's also simply nice to look at...another coffee table type volume.

[Ruppert Baird]

Want to know a bit about firearms? This is your book. It is essentially an encyclopedia of firearms and design of hundreds of weapons over the years.